Wednesday, October 9, 2013

AROP and VLWI

A quick follow-up chart using Eurostat data on at-risk-of-poverty rates and very-low work intensity and again highlights Ireland as an outlier. The data are from here.

The vertical axis gives the percentage point impact that social transfers have on the at-risk-of-poverty rate (equivalised income less than 60% of the median).

In 2011, the pre-transfer AROP rate in Ireland was 39.6%, by far the highest in the EU28. The post-transfer position reduced the AROP rate to 15.2%. The 24.1 percentage point improvement is represented by the vertical axis.

The horizontal axis is the proportion of people aged under 60 who live in households with very-low work intensity (those aged 18 to 60 work less than 20% of the available time). This simply repeats what was shown in the previous post.

The other 27 countries are in a fairly close group between 5 and 15 on both axes. The pointed labelled ‘HR’ is the newly-accessed Croatia. Ireland has by far the highest level of very-low work intensity and has by far the most impactful transfer system in reducing at-risk-of-poverty rates.